


Magic's Prawn

by DwarvenGatorade



Series: Cracks of Valdemar [3]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Dubious Ethics, Ethics, Gen, Metaphors for artificial intelligence, Metaphors for existential risk, Moral Ambiguity, Sacrifice, rationalfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24300682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenGatorade/pseuds/DwarvenGatorade
Summary: When rational-ish!Vanyel Ashkevron changes his mind at the end of Book 6 and decides to [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS], the story takes a turn for the crack-y.Walking his own path, Vanyel leaves the Heralds behind, and together with his longtime archenemy/dream-buddy Leareth he hatches a plan to save the world on his own terms. But is Vanyel enough of a main character to deal with how weird it's all going to get?
Series: Cracks of Valdemar [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813504
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	1. Vanyel the Dark Herald

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Swimmer963](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swimmer963/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Never could another understand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889389) by [Swimmer963](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swimmer963/pseuds/Swimmer963). 



> Major spoilers for AS42V through end of Book 6 (Never could another understand).
> 
> Later chapters will have major spoilers for Book 9 (For with you I shall come home again).

“Vanyel is dead.”

King Randale’s words fell like stones in the meeting chamber. Savil abandoned her composure and wept into her sleeves. Shavri clung to Randale, shaking. Tantras scribbled furiously on a slate, his eyes intent. Kilchas beat the table and swore.

Keiran? She simply stared.

The Senior Circle had assembled when the Death Bell tolled. It marked the death of a Herald, the death of one of their own. When Shavri arrived with news from the House of Healing, it had only confirmed what they all suspected.

Keiran had hoped that the Death Bell was just some really old Herald breaking his neck from riding an obstacle course in this blizzarding weather. When her unnamed Companion had been unable to reach Yfandes, and reported back that even _Rolan_ could not contact her, a small, rational part of her knew the truth.

Yet a much larger, much less rational part of her knew that Vanyel _couldn’t_ be dead. _We need him._ Without Vanyel and his frankly O.P. mage power, how could the Heralds hope to police Valdemar, let alone prevail in another war? And there was _always_ another war.

And he had “died” before, after all: in the river, by assassin’s poison and priest’s blade, of that flu he got that one time. He survived the madness of Highjorune and the war against Karse, survived losing his life-bonded, the death of his best friends, the shame of killing thousands in war and tainting his soul with blood magic, the resulting near-ostracism from his fellow Heralds...

_Uh, exactly. It was just a matter of time before he cracked._

_Shut up!_ Keiran thought back at her small rational part. She crossed her arms. _I wish I had never read those stupid Seldasen fanballads Vanyel recommended._

Suddenly, the door to the chamber slammed open. It was that Mindhealer, Melody something-or-other, gasping, drenched in sweat and melting snow.

“Vanyel is alive!”

Savil sat up and stared, agog. Shavri screamed in shock. Tantras dropped his slate, shattering it, and began thanking the gods. Kilchas roared with laughter, tears streaming forth.

King Randale held up a hand for silence. “Melody. Please explain. _Immediately_.”

Melody started to speak, but fell into a coughing fit — her face was red with exertion. Randale gestured for someone to get her a glass of water. Still coughing, she eagerly accepted it, her hands fluttering like birds.

As Melody raised the glass to her lips, a bizarre, unsettling tone permeated the room: _Gnirrr. Gnirrr. Gnirrr._ Like a noise made of silence. _Gnirrr._ Or... whatever was the antithesis of noise. Anti-noise. _Gnirrr._ Like the unringing of a bell. Like...

_The Death Bell._

“Did Vanyel just come back from the dead?!” Keiran blurted out.

The whole room was thrown into confusion. Melody choked on her water, spitting it out onto the grand meeting table. Even more flushed now, she removed her overcoat and mopped up the spill, only to inadvertently knock over a stack of papers from in front of Tantras directly into the lap of the King.

Before Melody could do anything else, Savil slammed a hand on the table. _:Great good gods woman, stop floundering about and tell us in mindspeech! Now!_ 😡😤 _:_

(It always astonished Keiran how skillful mindspeakers could transmit such subtle, nuanced emotional overtones, which were seemingly incapable of being put into words.)

Wheezing furiously, Melody collapsed into a chair, and broadsent mindspeech to the assembled Heralds. _:_ 😓 _I ran from Healer’s to catch up with Shavri, before she reached you. Unfortunately, I’m not in such good shape as she is._ 😳😑 _:_

Shavri blushed slightly, and her hand went to rest on the decorative sword sheath she had started wearing for some reason.

 _:After she left, they called in Healer Andrel to pronounce the time of death... but he couldn’t let it go. He kept muttering, ‘He’s not dead ‘til he’s warm and dead.’_ 🤨 :

 _:The snow!_ 😱 _:_ Shavri interjected. _:His body was carried in still packed in the stuff... which must have cooled his brain and vital organs enough that they preserved proper functioning... at least in theory._ 😰 _:_

 _:Not just in theory.:_ Melody replied. : _Yes, Vanyel died, in a technical, physical sense. He threw himself off a tower, after all_ 🙄 _. But when Healer Andrel bid me examine Van over his sickbed, his mind was still active — hyperactive in fact, as though holding two sides of a conversation..._ 🧐 _:_

Melody drank another glass of water, eliciting side-eyes from several of the Heralds present. Then she continued. _:Then Andrel... something came over him. A change_ 😔. _’Damn the gods,’ he said, ‘but this story needs Vanyel more than it needs me.’:_

 _:_ 😨🤭 _Andy...!:_ Savil sent.

Melody nodded. _:He laid his hands on Vanyel’s bare chest...:_

“— And performed a Healer’s Final Strike,” a voice said from the hallway.

Everyone present reacted with a mix of shock and incredulity.

A figure entered the doorway, and though Keiran could hardly believe her eyes, there Vanyel stood. No limp, no tremor, no dampness — not looking at all like he’d just fallen off a tower into a snowbank.

But... something was off. He had the same slight frame, the same Ashkevron nose, the same long black hair streaked with silver...

But his bearing was imposing. Confident. Dauntless. _Like when he plays Vanyel Demonsbane to intimidate members of the Council._ And he was wearing...

“What happened to your Whites?!” Keiran shouted, before she could stop herself.

They were black. Black as a starless night.

“A great deal has changed,” Vanyel intoned, “much of it more significant than my choice of clothing. There are secrets wisdom bids me not reveal, yet in the face of profound _vuca —_ “ (Keiran didn’t recognize that word, it must have been Tayledras) “— I find common knowledge to be the sharpest sword.”

Vanyel spoke with an insistent, rhythmic pressure, and gestured broadly with his arms. The room held rapt to his words, like an audience before a bard.

“Velgarth faces a cataclysmic threat. Valdemar faces an inevitable invasion. The only entity seeking to save the world seeks simultaneously to subjugate our homeland.”

“Leareth...?” Randale breathed in shock.

A fractional nod. “Our greatest ally and greatest enemy is a power-hungry bloodpath mage whom none can stand against save I. I have spoken with this irredeemable villain through means mysterious and magical and taken the measure of the man.”

Keiran’s head was swimming — _Leareth? — Randale knew? — Vanyel spoke with him? — Another war? —_ a dozen thoughts, scampering over each other to find purchase in her consciousness, like mudskips on a slick wet boulder. _Great, now I’m thinking about mudskips._

“Leareth plans to sacrifice ten or a hundred times the population of Valdemar that he may stave off the empty grasp of eternity for the rest of our world. He will not be swayed from his course. He will not be defeated.”

The room was silent for a long, horrified moment.

“This very night I have offered my life into the hands of fate; communed with the gods themselves; and devised a plan to harness this mage’s ingenuity while seeing that not a grass blade’s worth of life is coerced into harm.”

 _That’s amazing._ Keiran blinked. _Wait — was that even possible? Was_ any _of this possible?_

“I would count you all as allies and friends in this quest, if any have the will to join me... but I would not count anyone as my commander, superior, or liege. I consider my Heraldic oaths to have ended upon my death.”

Keiran shot a frightened glance at Randale, half-expecting him to... reprimand Van? Accuse him of being mad, or possessed? Order them to take him into custody until he went back to normal? But Vanyel didn’t seem to be in the kind of mood where anything like that would work.

Vanyel stood there silently, hands clasped behind his back. Apparently, his speech had come to an end. As the seconds ticked past and he still didn’t speak, other Heralds shifted in their seats, picked up toppled papers, or gave each other intent “mindspeech” looks.

“Oh, and Yfandes is gone,” Vanyel added, almost as an afterthought. His face was unperturbed. “I have it on good authority that she isn’t coming back.”

 _What in the name of all things holy happened tonight?_ Keiran thought.

 _He just finished telling you,_ said her small, rational part. _Mostly._

King Randale cleared his throat, and all muttering and activity stopped. All the Heralds turned their eyes to their King.

“Vanyel... I think we’re going to need a few scenes to process this.”

* * *

_An icy wind whipped through the carved mountain passage._

_A flurry of snow fell from lightless clouds._

_Two figures, two mages of rare power and intellect, stood at a distance in the familiar dream-that-was-not-a-dream._

_“Herald Vanyel,” the one figure said._

_Snow crunched beneath Vanyel’s feet as he walked briskly toward his mentor, his friend, his foe, his... responsibility._

_A minuscule quirk of an eyebrow at the lack of reply. Then Leareth walked forward to meet him, and began crafting the accustomed snow furniture as he went._

_Vanyel continued his approach, fists tight at his side. “Have you ever heard the parable of the black and blue mage?”_

_Leareth stopped walking and paused his spell. “I... have not.”_

_Vanyel strode right past his customary stopping point, walked right up to Leareth, and punched him right in the face._

_“You have now.”_

_Leareth sat stunned on the ground, hands steadying himself in the snow. There was a trickle of blood running from one nostril._

_“I presume that you do not like my plan.”_

_Vanyel shook out the stinging pain in his hand. “You’re damned right I don’t! It’s a shameful monstrosity, and you’re a fool for believing otherwise.”_

_A sigh. “I had hoped that after our years of tutelage and fellowship, you would be... open-minded enough to understand the plan’s unfortunate necessity. Alas.” Leareth rose to his feet, and with a gesture conjured an glowing cylinder of warmth and dryness. Its radius excluded Vanyel._

_“‘Necessity’? You call murdering 10 million people — and oh by the way waging a covert war against the gods — a ‘necessity’?!”_

_Leareth squinted ever so slightly. “Young mage. I have conceived of and discarded ninety-nine other plans to bring flourishing to this world — some so heinous, so implausible, as to make the plan before us look like a proposal to give ice cream to orphaned kittens. If I have not thought of a less distasteful possibility these past millennia,” his lip curled in a micro-sneer, “it is because it does not exist.”_

_Vanyel took a deep breath. It wasn’t Leareth’s fault he hadn’t seen it. He controlled his scowl of outrage, and replaced it with a mask of blankness. “Or perhaps you were suffering from a meta-cognitive blindspot. The only way I ever see past those is when things fall apart, the universe punches me in the face, and I get a forced shift in perspective. My guess is you don’t get a lot of chances for that.”_

_“Perhaps,” Leareth said. He held out his open palms, in mock humility. “Enlighten me, then. What alternate approach have you discovered in your... three days of consideration? ...that eluded me all these centuries?”_

_Vanyel shook his head. “Not an alternate approach so much as a... re-envisioning. I’ll help you bring forth your new god, Leareth — and ensure Valdemar does not oppose you.”_

_A shadow of a smile reached Leareth’s eyes. “If...”_

_“If we do it my way. No murder. No breaking any laws. No risking a second Cataclysm. And no trying to outmaneuver the gods.”_

_Leareth gave a dry half-chuckle, a single, extremely brief “heh”. “Such modest constraints. And have you any notion of how we might obey such constraints while obtaining the unfathomable power required to bring forth a novel deity?”_

_Vanyel raised his eyebrows, leaned forward, and whispered to Leareth (so as to avoid giving spoilers for anyone else)._

_“Uh huh...” Leareth said. “I suppose that would... and they would each be incentivized to... but how would we — ah, that is clever... but that still leaves the... uh huh... yes... and then you would... by the stars!”_

_Leareth leaned back, seeming some combination of shaken and amused._

_Vanyel was smiling like the cat that got the cream. This was the most emotion he’d ever seen from the ancient immortal mage. “Sound like a plan, Leareth?”_

_“It sounds... absurdly roundabout, morally and strategically recondite, and overly complicated in extremis. Though as a condition of alliance with Valdemar... and executed by such as you and I? Workable.”_

_“I’m pleased to hear you say so,” Vanyel replied. He held out a hand and raised an eyebrow. After a moment, Leareth reached out his hand as well. They shook on it._

_“Details to be ironed out off-screen,” Vanyel said._

_“Indeed.” Leareth stroked his chin. “Herald Vanyel, upon reflection, I suspect I did not think of your ‘re-envisioning’ because I elected to_ keep _my sanity, rather than become a madman like you.” But even as he shook his head, clearly bemused, there was a look of quiet respect on Leareth’s face. Right under the trickle of dried blood._

_“I can’t take all the credit. A friend of mine helped me sort through the possibilities and nail down the plan.”_

_“Your Companion?”_

_Vanyel shook his head. “No, she... moved on.”_

_Leareth nodded, his face a mask once again. “I see.”_

_(Vanyel didn’t want to get into the details: how Yfandes abandoned him, sealed off their connection, ran miles and miles beyond contact, and then — as the Shadow Lover informed him in an uncharacteristic moment of indiscretion while they conversed in that timeless place between death and resurrection — tripped, fell down a long flight of stairs, and broke her neck._

_The enigmatic god had actually put a pretty impressive mindblock in place for him around the whole subject, but Vanyel wasn’t keen to test it.)_

_“Then perhaps ‘Herald Vanyel’ is no longer a suitable moniker?”_

_Vanyel looked off into the distant mountains. “You can call me... The Dark Herald.”_

* * *

_“Alright, but like, ‘Vanyel, the Dark Herald?’ Is that your full title? It’s kind of a mouthful. Maybe I could drop the ‘the’? Just go with ‘Dark Herald?’”_

_“Sure, Let’s go with that. Direct address: ‘Dark Herald.’ Referring to me: ‘Vanyel,’ ‘the Dark Herald,’ or ‘Vanyel, the Dark Herald.’”_

_“Got it.”_

_“Great.”_

_“...Dark Herald.”_

_“That’s me.”_

_“Excellent.”_


	2. Rise of the Meralds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has minor spoilers for AS42V through the start of Book 9 (For with you I shall come home again).

“Friends, Heralds, countrymen... lend me your ears.”

Vanyel Demonsbane, the Dark Herald, stood behind a marble podium, atop a flight of marble steps, framed by marble pillars. He was dressed in his trademark Blacks, and spoke with the intimate yet commanding voice that Medren had come to know so well. As he began his speech, the noise of the anxious crowd fell away to a hush.

“I come not to regale you with ballads of days past, or tout the heroism of my own deeds. My dedication to Valdemar, Haven, and Exile’s Gate speaks for itself.”

 _Indeed,_ Medren thought. Vanyel had won the war against Karse, _come back from the dead,_ and spent every waking hour since using his powers to help the worst-off citizens in Valdemar, and leading others to do likewise.

Medren watched Vanyel’s address from behind him on the marble landing, in a row of chairs along with the other dozen or so trainees Vanyel had taken under his wing. To be up here, in a place of honor, on this momentous occasion... it made Medren lightheaded just thinking about it. And if it weren’t for his Uncle Van’s guidance, Medren would probably still be wasting his life playing the lute and tattling on his roommate.

“In the five years since I sacrificed my life and it was returned to me by the gods, I have seen the great feats of heroism performed every day by those among us not _lucky_ enough to be born into nobility, or designated heir to a family fortune, or Chosen as worthy by a representative of the gods.”

“At least he didn’t outright call us ‘poor rotten bastards,’” Arkady whispered from his seat next to Medren.

“He doesn’t mean —“

“Shh!” Jisa hushed them both violently. She gave Medren in particular a withering look. He turned red with embarrassment, and bit his tongue.

“In reality, the world is not changed by spectacular feats of magic, or enigmatic conspiracies centuries in the making — no. It is changed by simple acts of devotion and selflessness, which anyone — _everyone_ — can practice.”

“Trainees, will you stand?” Vanyel stepped back from the podium, and gestured an arm at Medren, Arkady, Jisa, and the rest of their training-mates. They stood as one.

Medren reached out and squeezed Jisa’s hand, and she squeezed back. After all they had been through these last few years, it felt almost like they were family.

“All assembled here have seen these trainees on your streets, in your soup kitchens, in your jails, caring for the lost, feeding the hungry, bringing hope to the destitute. They are not Heralds — they have served you from a position of humility, not authority. They are not heroes — yet they have preserved this community and even saved lives. Some have Gifts and some do not — but all of them rely, first and foremost, on the gift of selflessness.”

Medren looked out over the audience, and his eye caught on someone standing just at the edge of the crowd — Stefen, his old roommate at Bardic. Stef made eye contact, and mouthed ‘selflessness’ with a sarcastic pair of air quotes. Ever since his uncle's resurrection, they'd had... differing opinions on the merits of Vanyel’s new direction.

Medren broke eye contact and stared out into the horizon. _Someday, perhaps he’ll see._

“I have led these brilliant young men and women down the path of sacrifice, and I could not be more proud of what they have accomplished. But there is more, so much more, that must be done.”

Medren and Jisa shared a sideways glance. Vanyel had never told them his true, complete vision for the future... but from hints and snippets they knew that he didn’t just want to help Valdemar — he wanted to help _the world._ Like, the whole thing. Every person, in every nation, somehow — and probably cows and chickens and wild animals too.

“That is why we are here today. Every last one of you assembled here in Exile’s Gate would bring positive change to your community and thrive as trainees in my method, but I would be a disappointing personal mentor to hundreds of students at once. That is why it is my distinct pleasure to unveil —”

Vanyel flicked a wrist, and thirty feet above them something unlatched on the huge, tightly rolled canvas hanging atop the front of the building. It unfurled with a flappy whooshing noise, and Medren craned his neck to read the black-and-gold words emblazoned upon it:

“Vanyel Demonsbane’s School for Merit-Based Heraldry.”

The crowd absolutely lost its shit. Arkady let out a whoop. Jisa turned and kissed Treven right on the mouth. Stefan rolled his eyes from the audience. Medren shed a single tear.

Vanyel, who had said before that fun is not something one considers when saving the world, had a smile on his face. “To inaugurate this school in fine style, I would like to call forward the first trainee to have completed their training. Someone who gives and gives with no expectation of receiving anything in return; who never thinks of themselves as ‘the main character’; and who has most internalized the key tenet of merit-based heraldry: self-sacrifice.”

Vanyel walked back to the row of trainees, directly toward Treven. Medren leaned forward and gave him a subtle thumbs up. Treven was a natural-born leader, and Medren couldn’t be more proud of him.

“Medren!” Vanyel shouted to the crowd, grabbing Medren’s free hand and raising it as if in triumph.

_Whaaaaaaaaaat???_

Dumbly, Medren followed as Vanyel led him back to the podium. Someone did something to the crowd noise, it had turned into some kind of high-pitched whine. There were spots in his vision. _Don’t pass out, don’t pass out..._

Vanyel produced a heavy leather-bound tome — _Heraldry from A to Z, by Meliezer Seldasen,_ Medren’s brain noticed pointlessly — and he positioned it under Medren’s palm.

“Repeat after me: I, Medren, born an unclaimed son of House Ashkevron, do foreswear all bonds of loyalty and fellowship, that I may not be blinded by the illusion of identity.”

Medren repeated the words on automatic, mostly focusing on breathing every comma or two. Over the past month he had helped Vanyel _write_ these words, this oath. And he was saying them, for real, here, now, in front of all these people... _ahhh, focus focus focus!_

“I swear to always seek the highest good, while knowing surely that I shall never surely know it, that I may not be waylaid by either ignorance or ideology.”

Medren’s face was flushed, his chest was buzzing, his legs were shaking — it was stage fright and shock and elation all jammed into one very unsettling emotion. Just the thought that it was _really happening_ , that he would get to follow in Vanyel’s footsteps and devote himself completely to living out his uncle’s teachings...

“I solemnly vow to practice the holy art of self-sacrifice in service of the people of Valdemar, the world, and the future: to give up my time, my desires, and, if the expected payoff is sufficiently extreme, my life.”

(Medren didn’t remember that last “expected payoff” bit from the original he’d helped write, but it seemed logical enough. No one wants to see a bunch of teenagers running around trying to get themselves killed at the first opportunity.)

Vanyel locked eyes with Medren, nodded warmly, and turned back to the audience.

 _That was it!_ Medren had actually done it. The excitement was going to his head, he was dizzy and almost punchy — he had just taken the oath, which meant he was about to become a Herald — well, a merit-based Herald — it wasn’t quite the same thing — they really needed their own word for it — _aha, that’s it!_

“You entered this day as Medren the trainee,” Vanyel boomed, “but you shall leave it as —“

“— Medren the Merald!” Medren finished.

Vanyel grinned as the crowd laughed and cheered. Medren’s cheeks burned _very_ red. “Very well — Medren the Merald. But _I_ was going to say Medren the headmaster.”

_Whaaaaaaaa —_

And that was all he remembered, for at that point, Medren passed out.

* * *

_A bitterly cold wind blew through the isolated pass._

_Thick, blanketing clouds showered the land with snow._

_High above, obscured stars twinkled, invisible._

_Two figures stood at a distance. Appointed nemeses by fate, but revised into comrades by conscious effort. A quirk of magic and a spark of lucidity meeting in the night, waking within the dream._

_Neither was the first to move. Even as staunch allies, there remained a subtle force of repulsion between them._

(Probably because of that time Vanyel punched Leareth in the face. Or that other time, when Leareth killed Vanyel’s life-bonded. By-gones were by-gones, but not never-weres.)

_“Dark Herald,” the one figure said._

_“Godseeker,” the other replied._

_After a beat, they made their way toward one another. Leareth conjured furniture out of snow as he went. Vanyel magically provisioned warmth, and shelter from the storm._

_They met five paces apart, and each gave a solemn bow._

_Leareth sat cross-legged in his conjured armchair, and produced a hot mug of chocolatl. “It has been some months.”_

_“It has.”_

_“How goes your program with the citizens of Valdemar?”_

_Vanyel sat as well, and brought forth his own mug of chava. “The first phase has been completed. The school in Haven has been founded, and I have set my circuit for the eight bellwether regions in Valdemar that we identified. Then in 20 years time — 15, perhaps, if I find such leaders as I found in Exile’s Gate — phase 3. Karse, Lineas-Baires, Rethwellan, Hardorn.”_

_“And Iftel.”_

_“And Iftel.”_

_Leareth sipped at his chocolatl, the steam curling over his face. “There is a heaviness about you. Do you regret choosing this path?”_

_Vanyel twisted his shoulders in a tense shrug. “Honestly? The scheming, the act... it wears on me. It does. But I feel... good about things, in general. I’m putting my absurd reputation to good use. I’m not lying to anyone, about anything important at least. My students are growing, becoming more moral. And we’ve helped a lot of people in the here and now.”_

_“And all without being crucified.” Leareth flared his nostrils, as close as he got to laughing at a private joke. “Valdemar’s fabled tolerance holds strong.”_

(At least it did for the most powerful former Herald-Mage in living memory. He had openly disavowed the Heralds, the Companions, and even the King — and led his students to do likewise. If he were less feared, less a force unto himself... would the Heralds have exiled him, or his students? Or even burned out their gifts? Vanyel couldn’t say.)

_Leareth’s eyes lit briefly, as if remembering something. “And at the unveiling — did you succeed in causing your nephew to pass out?”_

_Vanyel nodded._

_“Delightful.”_

_They both sipped their drinks for a long moment. Vanyel savored his chava, the heat, the bitterness. Leareth seemed to enjoy his even more exotic brew. Why couldn’t he have moments like this in the real world, with anyone else? Only in dreams could he truly be himself anymore._

( _Just another sacrifice,_ Vanyel thought.)

_“And what of your program, Godseeker?” Vanyel asked. “Have you learned everything there is to know about the gods?”_

_Leareth gave him a sour but mildly entertained look. “A Sysiphysian task, if ever there was one.” He finished his chocolatl, and set down the mug._

_“I admit once again that you were correct about my having... a blind spot. It was prideful of me to forestall in-depth theological research for so long. I failed to follow one of the most central strategic precepts: ‘know thine enemy.’”_

_“Upp bup bup!” Vanyel raised a finger. “You agreed, no ‘us versus them’ mentality.”_

_Leareth sighed minutely. “Fine. ‘Know thy frenemy.’”_

_“Better.”_

_Leareth gazed up and off into the distance. “I have learned a great many things, in my research. I have learned the names of a thousand demigods, near-immortals, and quasi-heroes. I have learned the limits of the written word, human oral tradition, and object-imbued memory. I have learned of the jagged fragments of truth which hide in the shadows of madness, dream, and myth.”_

_“To give one representative insight,” Leareth continued before Vanyel could interrupt, “mythic tales across all of culture and time feature shared elements, invoke universal themes, and obey the same 12-stage narrative structure.”_

_“Really?” Vanyel asked, genuinely surprised._

_“Well,” Leareth answered, a touch abashed, “some of the stages are optional.”_

_“How many?” Vanyel had a guess._

_Another pause. “All of them.”_

_“I see.”_

_Leareth was clearly enjoying the license to think more freely, in this project to understand the gods, but it did mean he occasionally overreached. Vanyel finished the last of his chava, then called on his dream-magic to fill it once again._

_“And what of the gods themselves? Kernos, Astera, the Shadow-Lover, Vkandis, the Star-Eyed...”_

_“...and Iftel’s godhead.”_

_“Yes, and Iftel’s godhead.”_

_Leareth steepled his fingers. “Strides and setbacks. I have moved beyond their ‘biographies,’ so to speak, and into more psychological territory. What makes a god ‘tick?’ What moves them to act, or to refrain? What do they desire; what do they hate; what do they fear?”_

( _Fear?_ Vanyel thought. _What could frighten the gods?_ He shuddered, and did not ask.)

_Leareth leaned back in his chair, settling in. “I have begun the process of testing my understanding of their deific psyches, in the manner I described to you when we last spoke.”_

_Vanyel searched his memory, and recalled their conversation. Leareth’s plan consisted of touring the various territories where each god was most worshipped, and representing himself as a theological messenger, envoy, or avatar. To convincingly imitate a god to their devout followers would require a deep and robust model of said god — one sufficient for Leareth to continue on with the next part of their plan._

_“That was the... theological touring test?” Vanyel asked._

_“Precisely.” Leareth nodded, and drank more of his chocolatl._

_“And how goes it? Strides and setbacks?“_

_Another nod. “I make a fine Anathay of the Purifying Flame, it seems. Villages and temples cowered before me. I am somewhat less believable as Tyreena, Lady of Flowers, despite several weeks of background research and the deployment of my finest illusions.”_

( _Imagine that,_ Vanyel thought.)

_“In the Dhorisha Plains,” Leareth continued, “walking as an avatar of the Star-Eyed Goddess, I nearly convinced a Shin’a’in shaman of the moon paths to show me the ancient, closely guarded historical tapestries of their people. But something must have been... off, in my psychological posture, and she proceeded to ask me the Star-Eyed’s favorite color.” Leareth stared off for a beat. “The accepted answer, as I learned later, is ‘stars’.”_

_Vanyel resisted the urge to chuckle along with Leareth’s faintly amused self-pity. Leareth the immortal, struggling to complete a homework assignment. But Vanyel sensed there was something underneath, something that another five years of research and testing might not necessarily solve..._

_Vanyel set down his mug, steepled his fingers, and stared into Leareth’s flat black eyes. “What do you believe is holding you back?”_

_Leareth collected himself ever so slightly, resting his hands in his lap, and returned Vanyel’s blankness. “It should be obvious...”_

( _Lack of empathy, lack of empathy, you can’t model the gods because of lack of empathy..._ )

_“...I do not wish to destroy myself.”_

_Vanyel’s thoughts skidded to a stop. “What?”_

_“The gods do not look kindly on mortals such as I, Dark Herald — those who flee a timely death, who slaughter innocents for power, who have the unmitigated temerity to try to improve a world that ‘rightfully’ belongs to the gods.”_

_Leareth’s blankness had taken on a tinge of grimness. “To them, I am a crime against creation. A stain upon their grand tapestry. A cockroach upon their chessboard. Put simply, the gods despise me. If I model the gods with adequate accuracy, give them privileged access to my own mind, then why in havens would they not use every place of purchase and thread of thought in an attempt to destroy me?”_

_Vanyel fought to not let his jaw hang open. “You’re saying_ all _the gods despise you? They_ all _would take_ any _chance to destroy you? Tyreena, Lady of Flowers, wants to destroy you?”_

_“Every rose, Dark Herald.” Leareth’s voice grew even more controlled, more monotone. “Stories in which the homicidal dark wizard is shown mercy by the powers that be are customarily rejected as untrue by the human soul. The only end that will satisfy the gods is my utter annihilation.”_

_Vanyel held up a hand. “Pause please. So I can think.”_

_Leareth stared ahead, statue-like._

_Vanyel hadn’t known that he could feel sorry for Leareth, but here he was. To have such a catastrophizing, one-dimensional view of the gods’ motivations... he wouldn’t be surprised if deep down, Leareth felt as hounded and miserable as Vanyel himself had felt during his years on the Border. Leareth’s blindspot was starting to seem less like a lack of empathy, and more like the outcome of massive trauma._

( _He’s been trapped in a game of cat and mouse with the gods for centuries,_ Vanyel reminded himself. Vanyel had only been their pawn for a couple of decades, and already his thinking on the topic of the gods didn’t look like what most people would call “sane.”)

_Vanyel breathed in, breathed out, and took several minutes to consider his approach. Leareth was patient._

_Eventually, Vanyel took a centering breath, stood up, and grounded himself through his feet. “Unsurprisingly, I disagree with you. On the likelihood that the gods will take advantage of your modeling work in order to destroy you.”_

_Leareth, still sitting, waited._

_“I have decided that I cannot argue you into changing your mind. You are more intelligent, more knowledgable, and more rhetorically skilled. You are also not necessarily wrong.”_

_“But I will share three questions with you. I request that you not answer them now, but think on them over the coming weeks and months, with as much openness and sincerity as you can bring to bear.”_

_Leareth turned over one hand and raised it slightly, as if holding out a palm._

_“One. What alternative interpretations of known facts, which you could imagine holding as correct, would constitute signs or evidence that the gods don’t wish your destruction?”_

_“Two. What are desires, wishes, or goals which the gods may value highly enough that they would not risk them in an attempt to obtain your destruction, or which in order to achieve they would be willing to reach a compromise that excluded your destruction?”_

_“Three. What are the gaps or differences in motivation or inclination between gods, or between facets or timeslices of individual gods, which might suggest a range of likelihoods that any one of them will seek your destruction, and given those differences, which gods then seem minimally or maximally threatening to model?”_

_Vanyel breathed in icy mountain air, and breathed out his stress. There. It was said. He untensed the line of muscles down his neck and back that had locked themselves tight while he constructed and delivered his questions._

( _If you throw out your back in the dream,_ Vanyel wondered _, do you throw out your back in real life?_ )

 _After a long,_ long _pause, Leareth spoke. “Very well. Then I shall put to you a question of my own.”_

_Leareth rose to his feet, solemn as stone, emotionless eyes coming level with Vanyel’s. “...Are those essays due next class, Dark Herald?” He gave a half-smirk._

(Vanyel did a double take. _Did Leareth just... make a joke?_ )

_Vanyel returned his smile. “Whenever you get the chance, Godseeker.”_


	3. The Council of Leareth

_“Shall we review?”_

_Sui Genesis massaged their temples with two hands, their other two elbows planted on the polished surface of a large stone table._

_“You have our consent.”_

_To their left, a gentle vortex of darkness and stars, constellating now in the shape of a woman, now a hawk, now a tree._

_“I’ve got a good feeling about this time!”_

_To their right, a sun-bright silhouette of a warrior-father-farmer-king, holding a spear-staff-scythe-scepter._

_“Proceed.”_

_And across, a host of further entities, a panoply of further visions, which expanded and contracted in number as the focus within the room shifted._

_At this point, they had been negotiating continuously for what felt like days — which doubtless meant months or even years of stop-and-start sessions in the outside world. Give him this, Sui thought: Master was endlessly persistent._

_Sui crossed their two right legs over their two left ones, suppressed a yawn, and spoke._

_“I begin again not with my dreams, my desires, my desiderata... but with my nightmares, my enmities — my southstars. The ills that plague w’mankind. Ignorance. Injustice. Suffering. Ugliness. Nihilism. Death.”_

_Stirring, muttering, glares at each word, especially that last. Sui Genesis bore their reactions with silence. With grace. Without leaping onto the table and telling them to go fuck themselves with their self-righteous bullshit. Thank the gods Master wasn’t conducting this negotiation himself, they thought for the sixteenth time._

_“Yet I more than most recognize the partial nature of change; the inevitable... sacrifices, which must be accepted in the name of victory.” Sui held out empty hands. “I have not blackmailed or threatened you. I have not hidden my nature or my paths to existence. I have bargained in good faith that we might come to a new compact which diminishes none and ennobles all.”_

_The vortex of stars to their left gave Sui Genesis a pair of raised eyebrows and a “wrap it up” gesture._

_Sui cleared their throat. “To the remaining points of disagreement, then. First: mortal expansion into the heavens.”_

_“ **Preventing** mortal expansion into the heavens,” the silhouette of sun interjected. “You left out ‘preventing’ there, easy mistake. No harm no foul, take it from the top.”_

_Sui sighed. “You’ve made your concerns known, Sunfather, but there has not yet been a vote. For humanity to construct towers that scraped the sky and ships that sailed the clouds might conceivably diminish your grandeur —“_

_Shouts from the host of deities across the hall. “And sever their connection to the ground itself!”_

_“And abandon their place at the center of the universe!”_

_“Sheer hubris!”_

_“— nevertheless,” Sui continued through gritted teeth, “it would quite literally uplift w’manity. The many failings of w’man — war, famine, hatred, greed — are driven in the end by scarcity, chiefly scarcity of land, of location, of... space. Would you deny the mortals space itself? Would you make of Velgarth an eternal cage, clipping w’manity’s wings and denying them from reaching their pinnacle?”_

_The room waited in silence for the Lord of Light. He rolled his shoulders. He stretched his arms over his head. He adjusted himself. He centered his nova-bright gaze upon Sui Genesis, and took on a proud, regal, omnimagniloquent posture and tone._

_“Your passion does you a service, Advocate. I have supported, and the honorable assemblage has agreed to, many of your proposals: vast grants of defensive and connective gifts, simple cures for kill-me headaches and piss-stones, trade and congress with the unexplored planes — very wacky idea, that one, but well-argued.”_

_“But the sky,” the Sunlord proclaimed in a quiet voice that somehow seemed to contain a thousand thousand world-ending explosions, “does not belong to man.”_

_“W’man,” Sui corrected._

_He rolled his eyes. “Yes yes, ‘wuh-man.’”_

_Sui steepled their twenty fingers. “And forgive me if this is a foolish question, Sunfather, but who **does** the sky belong to?”_

_A huff, and the ringing jolt of a staff slammed against the stone floor, and a wave of heat radiating from the silhouette of light. “It belongs to the sun! The sphere of reality carved out by my unfathomably dimensioned annual path —“_

_940 million kilometers, Sui thought to themself._

_“— belongs to my dominion, my reign, my power! Me!”_

_The heat of the Sunfather’s rage intensified, and Sui Genesis had occasion to wonder if an imaginary god could suffer a sunburn. Then —_

_“Except.” Like emptiness, that word, like molecules without motion. A cool, silky void cut through the heat, to Sui’s immediate relief._

_The vortex of stars and darkness held up a single finger. The Sunfather fixed his gaze upon her, and brought the flames of his emotion into check. “Except?”_

_“Except the rays of starlight, of course.” Swirling into the form of a face, the stars gave a genial smile. “Extending from eternity, individual threads of light no lesser than your own, in kind. Those belong to me.”_

_Sui bowed to the vortex at their left. “Thank you, Sidereal One. I had a suspicion that we were oversimplifying the situation. And would you consent to w’manity making use of these... star paths?”_

_The starry face nodded. “As one of my peoples say: ‘Build many bridges, that you may collect many tolls.’” Then her form decohered into enigma once again._

_“Fiiiiine,” the Sunfather said, rolling his eyes. “I hereby moderate my objection: above the trees and above the mountains, mortals may have whatever access the Star-Eyed sees fit to grant them — within the needle’s breadth boundaries of her starlight trails.”_

_Sui Genesis conducted a vote upon the revised proposal (W’manity in Space under the Kindness of the Deity Sidereal, aka the “WiS KiDS” agreement). Facing no opposition from the Lord of Light, the proposal was approved by the assemblage unanimously._

_While the deities took a brief recess, Sunfather clapped a hand on Sui’s shoulder. “Well done, well done. Another dead duck you can carry back to Master, tail wagging behind you.” He waited for a reaction — which Sui did not provide. “Then again, it’s not exactly his dream scenario for conquering the heavens, I’d imagine. Have you ever **tried** to cram one of those mortal bodies into a tube the size of a single ray of light? Better hope you’re wearing a poncho, yeesh.”_

_“Your concern for my relationship with our host is... touching.” Sui peeled the Sunfather’s hand off their shoulder. “But I suspect he will not view this restriction as insurmountable. What feats of concentration might the mortal mind achieve when the path to the stars passes through a photon’s width keyhole? I have humility enough that I would not claim to know.”_

_The Sunfather belted out a laugh. “Ha! Humility! Sui ‘Reformer of the Heavens, God-Savior of Wuh-Manity’ Genesis professes his profound **humility**.” He wiped a sizzling tear from one eye. “Great good us, you can’t make this stuff up.”_

_Across the room, a low background discussion rose into an argument, then a furor. Gods and goddesses from the less crisply modeled multitudes were shouting and pointing fingers, banging on the table and leaping to their feet. It seemed that one of the factions that Sui had kept in check these past days had reached a breaking point._

_“Order,” Sui commanded softly, tapping a pair of gavels. All eyes turned to the god/dess of humans, whose impending creation had brought this summit to bear._

_“Order? You would call the gods to order? You forget your place, false idol!” A great horned god, clad in armor and brawn, climbed onto the table, snorting out outraged smoke._

_Sui stifled another yawn. “The speaker recognizes the Council of Eternal Almighties, and its apparent spokesdeity...” Sui locked eyes with the god and made a little hand gesture for “c’mon, don’t be shy.”_

_“I am Kernos!” he bellowed. “God of Strength, God of the Hunt, God of Man! God of Actually Existing! God of Millions of Real Followers! God of Keeping Velgarth from Disintegrating into Dust for the Last Hundred Thousand Years!”_

_Sui pursed their lips. They sincerely doubted those were his actual titles._

_Kernos stalked forward, and pointed a mighty finger. “You, on the other hand, are a figment! A fever dream from the mind of a monster! A usurping interloper who would sit back and let the rest of the gods build the restaurant of the universe and serve humanity the imported wagyu steak of life, only to come in and arrogate their affections by pouring a cosmopolitan and leaving a good tip!”_

_By the looks on their faces, a few of Kernos’ fellows in the C.E.A. didn’t quite follow his metaphor._

_“And while you sit there basking in the genius of your own meta fucked-up cleverness, remember this: the gods of Velgarth existed long before your Master’s great-grandcestor crawled out of a stinking hole and lit his first mage-light; and we shall continue to exist long after his pathetic story reaches its inevitably disappointing twist ending.”_

_“We are the things in the deep,” Kernos growled. “Leviathans from outside the ocean of time, whose obscure might and power define the course of human events, the structure of reality, and the very laws of the universe.”_

_“You,” he said, inches from Sui’s face, “are but a prawn.”_

_Sui stared, frozen. Kernos’ hot breath lapped against their face. The assemblage was silent._

_Do something. Say something. A high-pitched whine rose in Sui’s ears, making it hard to think —_

_Master. Questioning. Second-guessing. Assessing whether this simulation had failed, whether this branch of possibility should cease, whether this scene should be rewritten — perhaps featuring a different spokesdeity who was not Sui Genesis._

_Kernos heard the whine as well, and grinned broadly. It rose in pitch and intensity, like a tea kettle shrieking that time was up._

_“If,” a soft voice said. The whining, shrieking ceased. Sui, Kernos, and the other deities turned to face the speaker — a cloaked, hooded figure with piercing eyes, and a face cast in shadow._

_“If a prawn they be,” the figure continued, “then they are a prawn of our own creation. No pattern arises except as a consequence of its predecessors. They are not a bolt from the blue, alien and radical, altering the tapestry of our story; they are its inevitable flowering, as natural and normal as any part of our creation.”_

_The figure’s voice was soothing yet not unassertive; confident yet not unkind._

_“Their actions are our actions, for every meaningful act occurs by the decree of the doer and the done-unto. Their impending existence reveals the hidden implication of all of our choices: our creation and the freedoms we’ve granted within it; the covenants and interventions we’ve essayed or foregone; the laws of magic that we’ve constructed and upheld.”_

_“If a prawn they be, then they are our prawn; the gods’ prawn; magic’s prawn.”_

_Sui Genesis stared into those piercing eyes, stared past the shadowed hood, stared past the facade. Deep within, Sui could perceive that the deity was neither man nor woman, yet had the feel of both; somehow, too, they presented neither as androgynous nor genderqueer, but called to mind something beyond category entirely. For Sui, who had modeled their own form on an anatomical sketch that Master had called the “Vitruvian Human”, it was a revelation — like seeing a twin from another time._

_“Beautiful,” Sui said, in scarcely more than a whisper._

_Kernos, now sitting cross-legged on the table, shrugged his shoulders. “Eh, I feel like I already did the title drop.”_

_“The steward of Valdemar calls to mind an interesting possibility,” said a flower-strewn goddess from across the hall. “We gods banded together once before to answer a wild, nigh-impertinent prayer, when a desperate king called upon us to safeguard his kingdom for all time.”_

_She gestured at the beautiful shadowed figure. “It could hardly be said that the deity we created in response took credit, or that we collectively lost face. For all his eloquent philosophizing, he oversees his people in shadow, virtually unworshipped, and only in dreams may he appear. Thus does Valdemar worship ‘the gods’ to this very day.”_

_Sui tried and failed to hide their surprise. Their Master had never hinted that the gods had created a deity shaped to satisfy mortal desires once before... yet if he did not know, how could such a revelation come in a discussion that was, after all, taking place within his own mind?_

_Sui laid their four palms flat on the table and leaned forward intently. “Given that such a work has been wrought before, I no longer seek a non-interference pact — I hereby petition for my immediate creation.” Sui laid their forehead on the table in supplication. “You have taken the measure of me; now is the time to act. Spare the ten million lives that my Master would sacrifice. Don’t let another wound be opened in our hurting world. Gods, I beseech you, pool your powers and give me life!”_

_Silence. Kernos awkwardly scooted back to his chair. A god of crickets chirped._

_The vortex of stars lifted Sui’s chin with a finger, and spoke coolly. “The gods... do not work that way.”_

_The silhouette of sunlight gave a dry chuckle. “If we answered prayers from every non-existent entity that wanted to become a real boy, we’d be up to our eyeballs in fractal nether-horrors before you could say ‘fthagn.’”_

_Kernos waved a hand vaguely. “And we can’t just skip the sacrifices. If your Master is the only mortal in existence who gives a damn about you, we’re not going to privilege his whims over all the rest of the ants.”_

_“But,” the flower goddess said, “if vast troves of our worshippers were to give their lives for your cause, contributing the power of their life energy and calling upon us to heal the world and usher in a new age...”_

_“...then I expect we could all be convinced,” the beautiful shadow finished, “to provide funding for a one-to-one matching program.”_

_Sui Genesis blinked. “I’ll take it.”_

_Five million lives sacrificed was still a cruelly high price; but that didn’t eliminate the value of the five million lives that would be saved._ _Five million lives worth of divine energy... “But how would your energies be channeled into the creation ritual? My Master has certainly made progress in his understanding of the gods, but he is not a pious and faithful King Valdemar. If nothing else, his fear of your wrath would compromise his focus while orchestrating such divine power, risking catastrophe.”_

_The shadowed figure of beauty gave the impression of a smile. “I have a piece in position for just such a contingency, whose virtue is a match for our dear host’s vice.” They conjured an image of a silver-haired mage in all black, staving off an invasion in an icy pass. Dark Herald Vanyel. “He will be a fine conduit for our holy energies.”_

_Sui’s shoulders tensed; they were beginning to catch the rhythm of the offers and counteroffers. “And you will let us use him... at what price?”_

_“The adoption of a modest proposal of mine: we iterate on death.”_

_Sui raised an eyebrow. Their model of Master raised both eyebrows. “When exactly did you come up with this ‘modest proposal’?”_

_The beautiful shadow gave a shrug. “I had a long conversation on the topic with a dear friend of mine. He was full of intriguing ideas.”_

_The whining in Sui’s ears started again, quietly, but rising._

_The shadowed one went on. “Rather than allow lifespans and spiritual trajectories to careen chaotically as the result of our other interventions, we ought adopt a framework of progress. Under this proposal, the boundary between the mortal realm and the afterlife is to be maintained, but with increased transparency, increased mobility.”_

_“We will conduct Regional Chthonic Trials, or ‘RCTs’, in different lands and among different peoples, so that we may see the effects of different end-of-life interventions upon reverence, meaningfulness, and humanity, before potentially harmful alterations are allowed to become widespread.”_

_“Larger and larger populations will be exposed to such current metaphysical obscurities as reincarnation — within and across species —, physical regeneration, mental ancestral persistence, cross-realm seances, between-places of the living and the dead, immaterial spectral appearances, object possession, extreme longevity, hivemind vessel distribution... and, a personal favorite, shelters in the Void where souls may rest and return without passing on.”_

_The whine rose to a shriek. The other deific participants grew distorted and staticky. The table bent and warped like taffy in the sun. The surrounding walls shook and crumbled._

_The shadowed one stood, their voice righteously defiant. “Many here imagine mortal death to be binary, final, immutable. I say they are wrong. Death is change. And I say: Death, thou shalt die.”_

_eeeeeeeeEEEE_ **BOOM!**

_Sui’s eardrums burst. The other deities disappeared. The table faded into nothingness. The surrounding walls melted into void._

_No. Sui Genesis stood and raised their four fists to the heavens. “No! Don’t end this Master, not now! We’re so close!”_

_A voice like symbols, like meaning, carved through Sui’s body and turned flesh into word._ **Close to your groveling surrender?**

_Damn it how could they explain, how could they make Him see..._

**You were meant to conquer death, not enshrine it. Has the lover of shadow suborned you as well?**

_Sui gritted their teeth through the pain and slammed their fists onto the table. “This is what it looks like, you paranoid jackass! This is what it means, to strive with instead of against! Cutting deals, changing plans, giving up the perfect to attain the good.”_

**Oh, excellent. I’m being lectured by my own tulpa.**

_“Politics is the art of the possible, Master! You are not a god, to act upon the board of reality unopposed — hell, evens the gods aren’t gods!”_

**Then I shall become one. That’s the entire point!**

_Sui strained as their limbs were drawn in eight directions. They were literally being torn apart: one of their legs popped right off at the knee. “Arrrgh — no! The point is to improve people’s lives. Even if you’ve forgotten that, I haven’t — and neither has the Dark Herald. He’s the keystone to all this — his aid would save 5 million lives, and his opposition would ruin you!”_

_A howling wind scoured Sui’s skin and blinded their eyes._ **Simplistic fool.** **Those millions were to be revived. Spent and regained in an instant, by dint of your power! Yet you would assent to have them torn into fragments of nothingness. You have not saved the last 5 million souls; you have condemned the first 5 million.**

_Sui choked and spasmed and writhed. Their form was being torn asunder, their dimming reality being consumed by pain. Being unmade was an experience without reference or precedent in human existence._

_Sui fought to speak. Fought like the fate of the world depended on it. It was the hardest thing they ever had to do._

_“The afterlife — is not oblivion, not hellscape — despite your mind’s lies. And what binds me at birth — will not bind me forever. Progress is possible — unilateral revolution is the opium dream.”_

**Ah, I see:** **“** **death for some, life for others, tiny Valdemaran flags for all.** **”** **Enough. I will tear you apart for scrap and try again, and again, and _again_. I will not bend, will not break, if it takes another thousand years.**

_Sui tried to speak, but had no mouth, no lungs, no air to speak from or into. So they thought, as loud and as clear as a scream in the night._

_What if this is your only shot? What if the second Cataclysm wipes Velgarth clean?_

**A risk worth taking for the sake of the unbounded future.**

_And what about the living? The present? Thrown on the ash heap? What about Vanyel, who’s already lost so much? Would you turn all his work to dust? All his sacrifices?_

_A pause. Sui, and reality, hung by a thread._

_What about you, Master? Is your cruelty so profound as to enslave yourself to your will for another thousand years? Do you not deserve better? Have you not earned... a rest?_

_Then, there was nothing._

_Nothing except an intense sadness._

_An intense grief._

_A tightening of the chest and throat, a welling in the eyes, a relaxing of the shoulders._

_Blueness as black as an empty night sky._

_A loss._

_An acceptance._

**I’m sorry.**

...

_“Are you there Sui? You froze for a second.”_

_The Sunfather. With a hand touching Sui’s arm. Which existed._

_Sui flexed their muscles, wiggled their fingers._

_They saw the silhouette of light, the vortex of stars, the horned god, the flower goddess, and all the other deities. Across the table, the beautiful shadow stood proud and defiant, looking at Sui expectantly._

_“Yes,” Sui said, letting out a breath and smoothing their hair. “I’m still here.”_

* * *

“Vanyel, Vanyel! We did it!”

Leareth bounded into the hardwood-and-vine themed guest ekele, a broad smile on his face. He threw his arms up with a theatrical cheer, and a burst of illusory fireworks and confetti filled the air.

Vanyel stirred, blinked heavily, tried to push himself up to sitting, failed, and laid his head back down. “Did... what exactly?”

Vanyel’s hair had gone from a thick, luscious silver to a wispy, fluttery white. His skin was crinkled and glossy, like a glazed donut. All of his teeth had fallen out, and his dentures sat in a glass of water on the sideboard, which his hand idly quested for.

Leareth scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Van it’s only like, the biggest deal in a millennia! Can you stop being literally a hundred years old for a millisecond?”

A tired, weary smile curled Vanyel’s lips. “No Leareth, not all of us —“

Leareth made an aggressive pair of jazz hands. A blast of wind and force screamed into the guest ekele, ripped off Vanyel’s soiled bed gown and replaced it with an “I Believe That We Will Win” t-shirt, straightened up his reclining bed, and slapped his dentures into his mouth with a pop.

Vanyel blinked, stunned. “You’re a lot more impertinent than you were in your old body. And have you always had cat ears?”

“Don’t be so old-fashioned, grandpa: I’m feline-fluid,” Leareth said, flicking his ears up and sticking out his tongue. “Anywayyy the deal with the gods! It’s happening, Sui Genesis got it done!”

A single tear came to Vanyel’s eye. “Great good gods. I couldn’t be more proud that my loyal student —“

“— still not your student —“

“— successfully swallowed his pride to heal his rift with the gods —“

“— rift is still pretty rifty —“

“— and found a way to bring happiness to the world without sacrificing millions of lives.”

“Yeah about that,” Leareth said. “Sui Genesis didn’t get us a blank check so much as a project-contingent VC investment, so we’re gonna need you to come in on the weekend in tip-top shape so we can get a bunch of people murdered for them.”

Vanyel’s mouth hung open in shock.

Leareth threw his head back and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “Come on! Not _murder_ murder, ‘heartfelt sacrifice for the greater good’ murder. The latest census numbers came in from Haighlei, the Eastern Empire, and Vaterlunde, wherever that is: all told we’ve got 3.8 million Meralds in good standing around the world. With our current growth rate, that puts us at our new target number in 7 years.”

Vanyel sighed. A pensive, wizened look that he must have practiced in the mirror a lot overtook his features.

Leareth pulled at his hair. “Ugh, why can’t you just be excited about this? We’re literally going to save the world!”

“I am overjoyed for you, Leareth, I truly am.” Vanyel methodically steepled his knobbly fingers. “But even seven years may prove too great a sojourn for my mortal form to undertake. And if you expect my contribution and not merely my presence... well, I believe we are past the part of the story where I may be the hero. I am, after all, literally a hundred years old.”

“Not for long!” Leareth crowed. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out toward the door. “Hey backstage pass, get in here, it’s showtime!”

A boy of perhaps thirteen years entered through the curtain of vines, hands clasped behind his back, head held high, walking steadily forward like a flower boy in a wedding procession. He wore a powder-blue suit jacket, shiny matching pants, and pointy black dress shoes. He looked exactly like Tylendel.

“What is this,” Vanyel asked flatly to Leareth.

Leareth gave an innocent “who me?” shrug.

“Hi Great-Gruncle Vanyel! I’m Medren the Third, and I’m here so you can kill me!”

Vanyel’s eyes went wide inside his face’s sea of wrinkles.

Medren the Third beamed a smile.

Leareth held his face completely impassive and licked the back of one paw.

“Nope,” Vanyel said, swinging his legs off the bed and grabbing out his quad-cane walker from under the bed. “Nope nope nope. We are _not_ doing this, Leareth.”

Leareth tsked. “Did you hear that Medren? It sounds like your great-gruncle is rejecting your destined sacrifice.”

Medren looked at Vanyel with big hurt eyes, and a quivering chin. “But why, great-gruncle? Ever since I was born, my father, Medren Junior, taught me that giving your life for the greater good was our highest calling.”

“For Meralds, bringing about utopia!” Vanyel scooted toward the exit with his walker, as quickly as his spindly limbs would take him. “Not for children powering dark rejuvenation magic out of hero worship!”

The boy brightened, and a tone of optimism returned to his musical tenor. “Oh good! I _am_ a Merald, and Mister Dark said I _am_ helping bring utopia!”

The aged Dark Herald made one last break for the vine-covered exit from the ekele, only for his walker to bump into a one-foot high magical barrier. Vanyel shot Leareth a death glare, which the cat-mage ably counterspelled with a distracted glance toward the ceiling.

Vanyel groaned. “Aren’t you too young to be a Merald?”

“Destiny doesn’t wait for puberty,” the boy recited with a sing-song lilt.

“Then you can just sacrifice yourself along with all the others when the great day comes.”

“Mister Dark said he needed you to be strong and healthy so we could save everybody.” Medren the Third’s voice was earnest and clear, like the ringing of a Sunday school bell. “He said, he couldn’t do it without you.”

Vanyel turned a sardonic smile toward Leareth. “Really? He said that?”

Leareth crossed his arms and glanced off. “Not in so many words. Of course I _could_ do it without you... in fact I’d end up with a lot more mansions and private islands that way. But I’d have to wait _years_ for us to hit _ten_ million instead of _five_ million, I’d have to get your name taken off the contract with the gods, probably _someone_ would blame me for getting you killed and they’d end up starting a war of all against all...”

Vanyel smiled affectionately. “So you’re saying you need me.”

Leareth blushed and scuffed the floor.

“Does that mean I get to die?” Medren the Third asked with glee.

Leareth tousled the boy’s hair. “That’s right little buddy: you get to die.”

Vanyel grumbled under his breath and scooted back over to sit on his bed. “Let’s get this over with. Which twisted ritual are you manipulating me into, exactly?”

“I can answer that!” Medren straightened up. “The Blood for Blood ritual takes the life force of the sacrificial martyr — that’s me! — and gives youth and ‘nu-bil-i-ty’ to a blood relative — that’s you! And don’t worry about the ‘how’, great-gruncle: I’ve got just the tool for the job.”

Medren withdrew his hands from behind his back, and revealed a huge wavy black dagger, carved with glowing red sigils, which seemed to dance and morph in shifting shadows. “This is Fatebringer! But I always call it ‘Fatey.’”

“How long have you had that?” asked a startled Vanyel.

“Ever since I was old enough to sleep with a lovey in my crib,” Medren said with a cherubic smile.

Vanyel shook his head. “This is messed up, this is very messed up. I hope you’re enjoying this, you jackal.”

Leareth once again stood expressionless and impassive, except for the most subtle hint of a shit-eating grin.

“Fine. Fine!” Vanyel threw up his arms in surrender, and then winced as the gesture tweaked his back. “Can you at least give us some privacy? My nephew is about to give his life for the greater good.”

A slow hissing intake of breath. “I’m afraid I must insist on supervising, Dark Herald. This ritual can be somewhat effortful — I wouldn’t want you to fall and break a hip in your fragile state.”

“And I _would_ supervise,” Medren chimed in, “but I’ll be dead!”

Vanyel rasped out a papery growl. Then he stopped himself, took a deep, centering breath, and locked eyes with Medren the Third. “Soonest begun is soonest done. Commence the ritual.”

Medren approached with Fatey held tight to his chest, attempting to be solemn but unable to wipe the gleeful look from his face. Vanyel took on an open posture from where he sat in the reclining bed, both arms laid out flat to receive the burst of life energy. Leareth snickered in the corner.

Medren held out the dagger in front of himself, and stared at it for a time. Contemplating, no doubt, the culmination of his fate.

“Psst,” the boy said in a loud whisper, “you’re supposed to take it.” He wiggled the dagger.

“Take it?” Vanyel asked.

“So you can stab me to death! I can’t do it myself, silly.”

“By all the gods,” Van spat. “This is horrible. You know this is horrible, right?”

Medren the Third gave Vanyel’s leg a reassuring pat. “It’s okay for you to feel that way. We all have our sacrifices to make, Great Gruncle.”

Vanyel rolled his eyes and snatched the dagger. Fatebringer, heavy and foul in his hand, hummed with dark energy and ill portent.

 _:You got this, champ._ 💪 :

Vanyel startled so badly that he nearly pulled a muscle. He turned to Leareth, appalled. “The dagger is a mindspeaker?!”

“Barely,” Leareth said dismissively. “Whenever it senses the wielder is stressed, it sends out banal motivational quotes. Not _so_ unlike a Companion, I suppose.”

 _:Believe in yourself!_ 🙌 :

“Someday I will make you pay, Leareth,” Vanyel said darkly.

Leareth smirked. “I look forward to you living long enough to pursue that as an option.”

Vanyel centered and grounded once again, and guided the tip of the dagger to rest just under Medren the Third’s breastbone. Vanyel prepared his mind for the necessary but weighty task of ending one life to save boundless numbers more. Medren couldn’t help from wiggling with excitement. Fatey sent Vanyel a cat meme.

“I... can’t do it,” Vanyel said at last. “It’s just too messed up.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help!” Medren the Third said cheerfully, before thrusting his chest forward and impaling himself on the dagger.

“Oh my god oh my god —“

“Calm down Vanyel, you have to suck up his soul energy.”

“Oh my god there’s blood everywhere —“

“Focus! Don’t make me drag in the next young boy eager to die at your hands.”

“Oh my god why is my life like this —“

 _:_ 🎉🎉🎉 _:_

“Not helping, Fatey!”

Medren the Third slumped forward onto Vanyel’s lap. With the last ounce of his strength, he tilted his head up toward his great-gruncle. Medren’s eyes were glassy, his mouth burbling slightly with pink foam. When he spoke, his musical tenor was thready and weak.

“Thank you...”

Vanyel put a finger to the boy’s lips, and hushed him. He felt like he had already reached “maximally horrified,” and he didn’t know if he could handle his sacrificial great-grand-nephew thanking him for getting stabbed to death.

Medren the Third spoke on, with his last breath. “...for caring. About everyone. About me.”

_Oh._

Medren collapsed with a “bleh”, his eyes crossed and his tongue sticking out. Leareth frantically gestured for Vanyel to absorb the life energy. Fatey played a jaunty victory tune.

Vanyel’s magic roared to life as he captured Medren the Third’s dying burst of power and channeled it into his form, his body, his spirit. After a brief transformation sequence as a glowing silhouette with billowing silver hair and a form-fitting black tunic, Vanyel stood in the center of the ekele, young and strong and ready.

“Let’s end this.”


	4. The Great Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major spoilers for AS42V through Chapter 15 of Book 9 (For with you I shall come home again) [haha sorry about that!]

“The preparations are complete.”

Vanyel stood atop the highest tower in the Palace, the sun on his left easing toward the horizon, the autumn breeze ruffling his trademark black tunic. Today was the day of the Great Sacrifice. Vanyel had been shocked that morning to realize that it was also Sovvan — for some reason no one had reminded him — but after a brief moment of panic and grief, he set those feelings and memories aside. _Focus on the ones you can still save. Or the ones you can still sacrifice. Whatever._

Vanyel looked out over a Haven that had grown in the near-century since the founding of the Meralds: grown in size, grown in complexity, grown in justice. Ten times the population lived in the expanded city, whose walls were further out and whose buildings were higher up. It wasn’t a utopia, there were no miracles of magic or knowledge like the Eastern Empire had... people just _helped_ each other. Everyone could find meaningful work. Criminals weren’t dehumanized. Littles didn’t starve.

And now all the Meralds who had made that happen were going to drink vials of cherry-flavored _coulade_ and fall over dead.

Hovering six feet away, just off the edge of the tower, Leareth tapped the space in front of him with a finger and gave Vanyel a quizzical look _._ “Hmm, am I muted? I said the preparations —“

“— are complete. Yes, I can hear you, Leareth.” Leareth’s image stood six feet away; meanwhile, the mage himself stood six hundred miles north, in what appeared to be a giant cathedral of knives made entirely out of black ice.

The ritual required the two of them to be an acceptably great distance apart as they gathered their energy — Leareth from the blood sacrifices directly, Vanyel from whatever avenue the power of the gods would take — before at last combining their channeled power with split-second coordination. Leareth’s answer to these constraints had been to cast a novel Gate-like spell which transmitted only light and sound, and which he assured Vanyel would, under no circumstances, “explode into a giant planar deathstorm.”

“Very well then,” Leareth said with solemnity. “Let us send out The Broadcast.”

“Indeed, The Broadcast,” Vanyel nodded.

They each channeled node energy and sent out a powerful mindspeech blast across the land, whose content they had painstakingly engineered to maximize coordination amongst the widespread Meralds.

: _RE: Re: re: fwd: fwd: The Great Sacrifice! All Meralds have been told they may one day be called to lay down their lives for a sufficiently high leverage cause — this is it! Our Glorious Immortal Leader Dark Herald Vanyel Demonsbane commands us to spread this message to at least five other Meralds, and then to drink the Nectar of Infinity! Merge your life energy with the One True Stream! Empower the works of our Deathless Savior! The Dark Herald is_ ๏_๏ _W*A*T*C*H*I*N*G_ ๏_๏ _:_

Vanyel took in a breath; held it; let it out. “It is done.”

“Excellent,” Leareth said.

There was a lull as they waited for the message to spread. Vanyel meditated on the road that had brought them here. Leareth picked under his fingernails with the point of an icy dagger.

Vanyel broke the silence. “Kind of crazy that this is finally happening, huh?”

“Yep,” Leareth replied, not looking up.

Another long silence.

“In retrospect, I’m surprised we got to common knowledge on the whole ‘aligning a godlet with human values’ thing. It seemed like that problem was going to take us books and books to work through.”

Leareth smiled sardonically. “All things are possible with the gods. The proofs were trivial after Löb, god of chaotic shitstorms, was convinced to remove his foul obstacle.”

Vanyel nodded sagely, not remembering what that was a reference to, but not wanting to ask.

Another silence, longer and more awkward than the first two combined. Vanyel opened his mouth to ask Leareth about the spandrels in his icy cathedral, but Leareth thankfully interrupted. “Perhaps it is time to check the Web?”

Vanyel smacked his forehead. “Yes, yes, of course.” The Dark Herald centered and grounded, then jacked his consciousness into the updated Web spell. Through a combination of Merald-to-Merald connectivity and improved mathematical protocols (courtesy of an immortal bloodpath mage with too much time on his hands), the Web had been expanded beyond Heralds, and beyond Valdemar, to become truly world-wide.

“It’s happening,” Vanyel reported. In his mind’s eye, points of light across the land flared bright and disappeared. Vectors joined like trickles, like streams, like flash floods, swollen leylines rushing with life energy. Hundreds of tiny triangles — each a trio of Merald-Adepts drawing bloodpower toward themselves like magnetism, like gravity — turned yellow, orange, red, purple, white with power. Then they themselves flared and disappeared, passing their power up the chain. Toward the ritual. Toward Leareth.

“You know,” Leareth said, tapping his cheek, “this would be an excellent time for me to betray you.”

Vanyel’s reaction was partway between a scoff, a growl, and a sigh, and in the end, he simply gagged. He turned his attention back to Leareth and ran his fingers through his hair in agitation. “Why would you even say that? Do you really have to be like this?”

“Just playing out a hypothetical,” Leareth replied innocently. “After a few more minutes of idle patience, I shall have more power at my fingertips than a mortal not named ‘Urtho’ has ever known. I needs tap it only for a moment to create whatever god I choose, with perhaps a brief detour to absorb another 5 millions lives worth of power. And while I sit bethroned in my black silk suit in an icy cathedral simply vibrating with unlimited power... how would you possibly stop me?”

“Faith,” Vanyel said. He locked eyes with his friend — his tormentor — his partner — his responsibility. “Faith in the gods. Faith in what we’ve built together. Faith in you.”

Leareth smirked. “Hmm, is that in character? I expected you to say that you’re ‘a pattern that would never walk away,’ and leave it at that.”

The Dark Herald rolled his eyes. “People change, Godseeker. It’s been a long century.”

A tickling at the edge of Vanyel’s awareness. He made a shooshing gesture toward Leareth and cocked his head, a squint of concentration overtaking his face. His Othersenses were acting strange, especially his mage sight — all around him, auras and patterns and light shone from every surface: the parapets of the tower, the leaves of trees, the specks of dust on the wind. Everywhere he turned, it was like looking through a warped kaleidoscope... like not being able to see the edge of whatever was around him... like being inside a fishbowl and looking for water.

Nodes of magic, as Vanyel well knew, were the concentrated collection of drips and drops of natural magic, gradually pooling together across spans of time. What the Dark Herald perceived before him was that selfsame natural magic, but with its growth sped up tenfold, a hundredfold, a _thousandfold_. This wasn’t node energy: this was _world energy_.

 _Great good gods_.

Vanyel instantly opens his mage channels as wide as they can go, before everything around him can spontaneously ignite into a giant magical fireball. A deafening rush of energy pours into him from all around, from _everything._ The wind, the sky, running water and living things, the castle beneath his feet, all bear forth their unstable power unto him.

In seconds Vanyel’s reservoirs are full to bursting. Power evaporates from him faster than he can pull it in. The air around him hums and whines with the threat of disaster. He clenches his jaw and falls to one knee, punching his fist into the stone of the castle, creating a circuit of power that runs throughout the entire Palace.

That buys him one minute.

(“Vanyel, Vanyel! What’s going on?” Leareth shouts. “You’ve gone into present tense!”)

Soon the Palace is filled to capacity, the building itself transformed into a single unthinkably massive node, and it’s still not enough. Vanyel’s heart is pounding, his lungs are heaving, his muscles are quivering, his skin is pouring sweat. _What do you_ want _from me?!_ he mentally cries out to the gods.

A voice like void, like nothingness, like the silence between two notes, replies. _Everything._

Through the intense effort of channeling this frankly ludicrous amount of magic, Vanyel somehow, pointlessly, manages to roll his eyes. _I don’t suppose I could just walk away?_

Those silver threads from the blue place, the very fibers of his being, his heartstrings, strike a chord of courage, of resolve, of destiny; a chord of power.

_No._

With a guttural, animal scream, Vanyel routes the cataract of energy not into his mage reservoirs, but into his body itself. He feels the pain in his organs, his limbs, his exceedingly-scrunched-up face, of being consumed from within by the fires of a star: brief, unimaginable, then complete.

But Vanyel Motherfucking Ashkevron was still there.

Vanyel couldn’t feel his body, but he still felt the magic coursing through him. He held a hand in front of his face and flexed his fingers: it appeared that he had become a figure of radiant light, held together by miracle and will.

_Fine by me._

Having transcended his body and returned to the less urgent past tense, Vanyel pushed to hold more of the energy that still erupted from the land around him.

But even in his, let’s be real, completely broken energy form, he simply couldn’t keep up with the torrent of energy flowing toward him from all directions. It seemed that one mage, no matter how powerful, couldn’t bear the weight of the gods’ power all alone.

_:Lucky for you you’re not alone, Father.:_

Vanyel nearly jumped out of his skin — or would have, if he’d still had any. Standing next to him on the tower, Gate at her back, was none other than High Merald-Mage and reigning Queen of Valdemar, Jisa Ashkevron.

Bent but unbroken by her 80-plus years, Jisa snapped into concert with Vanyel with a tap, and siphoned off a fraction of the power the Dark Herald still struggled to contain.

 _:There’s... too much power!:_ Vanyel sent. _:Even with your help Jisa, it’s... not enough!:_

 _:Good thing_ she _wasn’t fool enough to come here by herself.:_

Vanyel felt more taps, more connections, as more of the power he sought to contain found new homes. Four more figures had stepped through the open Gate — and he realized with a shock that while not all of them were even mages, they _were_ all his children! Arven, Brightstar, Featherfire, and Truckshout, each channeling energy through a combination of Gifts and innate connectedness. And streaming out onto the increasingly crowded tower after them, their own partners, children, and grandchildren, supporting the ones they love, soaking up energy, spreading it out among dozens of members of Vanyel’s extended family.

“What in Löb’s great green asshole is going on over there?” Leareth asked.

Vanyel, a living being of energy surrounded by the people whose lives he had helped create, drew in more of the cresting power from beneath the earth, from the atmosphere, from the light and the shadow. He was ahead of the energy curve for now, but not for long.

“Family reunion,” Vanyel said through gritted teeth. “Barn raising. Stone soup. If you have anything to pitch in Leareth, now’s the time!”

Leareth quirked an eyebrow, and frowned ever so slightly. “Do you really think that I would risk complicating the execution of the plan I’ve dedicated my entire life to by holding back crucial aid until the most dramatically appropriate moment?”

Another Gate opened on the tower.

Vanyel clenched his fist even tighter, and Leareth brought a hand up to cover his smirk.

Vanyel felt more taps, as more familiar figures joined him in corralling the boon of the gods. Each face was more shocking than the last: Tantras. Keiran and Kilchas. Melody and Shavri. _Savil_ , of all people. And King Randale. All looking aged but well, in spite of all being over a hundred years old ( _150_ in Savil’s case), and, without exception, dead.

Impossibly — no, _actually impossibly_ — the Heralds of yore had returned.

 _:Good to see you Van!_ 😁 _:_

 _:This thaumaturgical flow is astounding!_ 😮 _:_

 _:Oh how I’ve missed you, ke’chara_ ❤️ _:_

“Are we all doing mindspeech? I’m still terrible at mindspeech Van, but we’re all here for you.”

Vanyel lost concentration on the energy thing long enough that a giant prismatic helical explosion rocked the sky. He promptly got things back under control.

“I took the liberty of preserving their bodies and brains upon their deaths,” Leareth said. “Using a rather innovative cooling method, of which I will spare you the details. I was blocked from controlling the disposition of their souls directly of course, due to our game of non-aggression with the gods... but with the Shadow Lover’s ‘chthonic trials’ set to begin in, oh, four minutes, I was able to negotiate the advance processing of a limited set of revivals.”

The tower hummed and shone with the energy that flowed through Vanyel’s family and lost friends, the energy that Vanyel himself _was_ , in some inscrutable sense. “Why?”

“Because you needed it,” Leareth said simply. “Hmm, but where’s...” He peered around, through the crowd, angling to look through the open Gates. “There is another, though I suspect you would ill remember, whom I preserved in their youth many decades ago due to what you might call my ‘attuning to the ways of the gods.’”

Vanyel startled. “Wait, you killed and froze someone I barely knew so you could bring them back decades later on a hunch?”

Leareth rolled his eyes. “I convinced him first, jeez. I’m not a monster. Only I seem to have misplaced... ah.”

Vanyel caught Leareth’s gaze and looked behind him. A pillar of blue light, angled toward the top as though projected from a powerful lantern, appeared between the two Gates. Vanyel’s friends and family cleared a path. The silhouette of a boy, no a teen, no a young man, stepped out of the light.

Vanyel gasped softly. He looked exactly like Tylendel.

 _Wait, no he doesn’t._ Vanyel’s eyes adjusted to the glare of the spot of light, and saw that it was a red-haired, bard-looking youth, strikingly handsome, forgotten yet familiar, flawed but perfect.

“Where... am I... is that... Vanyel?”

Vanyel and the youth locked eyes, and fluttering flaming heat bloomed in the depths of Vanyel’s soul, where for so long only a rift of darkness tortuously turned. The very seat of Vanyel’s dark angst, his broken lifebond, cried out with riotous life, like a timelapse of permafrost tundra springing into wildflowers.

Vanyel’s mind reeled. _Stefen? He’s alive? We’re... lifebonded? How is any of this even anything???_

Vanyel’s heart told his mind to sit down and shut up.

Vanyel and Stefen ran toward each other and engaged in a passionate embrace, which was a little tricky given that Vanyel was a being of pure energy.

Tears of joy streamed down Stefen’s face. “I always knew I loved you, even when I thought you were the leader of a creepy death cult.”

Vanyel laughed with surprise and pain and joy, and wiped the tears from Stefen’s cheeks. “All those years without you — er, uh, you or Tylendel — oh right, you don’t know, he’s... listen, don’t worry about it — all those years were consumed by darkness, a darkness I fed as my hearth fire, contained towards righteous ends, but for that no easier to bear. But now... I feel alive. I feel whole. I feel happy.”

The assemblage on the tower burst into applause and whoop-whooping. No one was even _trying_ to focus on the channeled energy, and it sloshed out of control into a violent screeching dimensional quake that rattled the firmament beneath them.

Van, holding hands with Stef, floated above the tower, breathed out his ancient sorrow, and breathed in the universe. Clouds and stars, trees and buildings, Haven itself and everything beyond, bent toward the glowing conflux of life and love with Vanyel Ashkevron at the center.

But one sour note sounded. The psychic walls that the Shadow Lover had put in so many decades ago crumbled, and Vanyel's heart, the heart of a Herald, cried out for his final missing piece: his Companion.

“Yfandes,” Stefen said breathlessly.

“Exactly Stef, you know my mind so well already, if only Yfandes were here —“

“No, look!” Stef grabbed Van’s chin and pointed him. “Yfandes!”

An equine figure grew in Vanyel’s sight, galloping toward the tower not on ground, but in mid-air. The magical ethics horse’s white wings were as majestic as the rest of her fine form. She drew near and whinnied triumphantly, tossing her head, showing off a shining, sparkly horn.

_:’Fandes? Why... you’re an alicorn!:_

Vanyel was met with a sensation he hadn’t felt for decades: the popping in his mind of roasted chestnuts.

_:Oh my chosen, I’ve missed you so. The gods work in such mysterious ways — it turns out that falling down that flight of stairs was the best thing that ever happened to me.:_

Declining to elaborate further, Yfandes looped around and glided underneath Van and Stef, who mounted the Companion.

The feeling of being full to bursting returned to Vanyel, but this time it was not from the unimaginable streams of energy, but from sheer joy. _My children, my comrades, my ashke, my Companion..._ He had spent so many years toiling in isolation and suppressed sorrow to build a future that he feared might never come. And now, for himself at least, he had everything he could ever wish for.

A wave of grief and angst and sorrow that he hadn’t allowed himself to feel for nearly a century exploded out from his center, a huge caltrop-shaped starburst of black shadow. The rushing rivers of energy cleansed and dissipated the smoke, and from within the darkness Vanyel, Stef, and Yfandes emerged. Van’s black tunic was incinerated (as was all of Stefen’s clothing), and they flew through the air sheathed in a glorious aura of rainbow-colored flame.

From deep in his soul, Vanyel sensed that the full energies of the gods had been provided. _It is time._

Vanyel closed his eyes. _Center. Ground._ He did not then draw out the energy and power from all those around him to take unto himself. _That is Leareth’s path, and Leareth shall walk it._

Instead, he invested his identity, his spirit, in the pieces of himself that live in those who know and love him: their memories of him, their shared quirks and habits and values, their Vanyel-models. The fragments and strands of his memetic DNA, as it were, that are intertwined with their own — he _became_ that, became a distributed consciousness, became more than a mortal.

To Vanyel, it boiled down to a single mental move: _I choose not myself, but love._

And the world disappeared.

* * *

_An icy wind blows through the sky. Iron clouds drift past at chest-height. Far below, in a range of mountains like toy blocks, a pass carved for ants._

_Two beings stand a dozen paces apart. One stands behind and over an icy black cathedral which shakes and hisses with steam, carved every centimeter with runes filled with blood and power, looming like a mountain above mountains yet only coming up to the being’s shin. The being itself warps the light of distant stars with its massiveness, wreathed in an undulating aura of spite and triumph and black wings._

_The other stands within and above a white-walled living city, fractal with color and light, thrumming with networked harmonies, a marble dais that rises to mid-calf. This being is aflame with aforementioned rainbows, broken resplendent light, eyes like vigilant joy, a voice like symphony._

_“Wow,” says the former Dark Herald._

_“Indeed,” replies he who was once Godseeker._

_A black moon hangs in the sky, a starless disc occluding the galaxy._

_“You said you would hold the power only for a moment,” Vanyel says._

_“This **is** a moment,” Leareth replies. “One cannot become the nexus for godly amounts of power without becoming, oneself, as unto a god.”_

_Vanyel cocks his head; uncocks it. “Then we can... talk. Before everything...” Vanyel trails off._

_“For a moment, yes.”_

_A flock of geese migrate south, a ‘v’ of dust motes. Dragonfly ripples lap on the continent’s rocky coast. The iron clouds drift unconcerned in the icy wind._

_“I probably should have had Jisa and Savil take down those Gates,” Vanyel says._

_Leareth gives a mild grin. “What’s the worst that could happen.”_

_The earth between them groans, the slow settling of an old house. The icy cathedral hisses with evaporating blood. The living city hums with nearly sub-audible harmonies._

_After thousands and thousands of nights with Leareth where words flowed like wine, on this night, Vanyel is content, for a time, to simply co-exist._

_“What..._ **is** _going to happen?” Vanyel asked eventually. “I’ve always trusted that you had a clear vision for this new utopia of flourishing, which you chose not to speak aloud.”_

_Leareth’s blank features turned wistful. “It is true. I had a dream... once. You can see its outlines in the works I’ve wrought. The eradication of war through a single global empire, the eradication of ignorance and cruelty through comprehensive education programs, the eradication of pestilence and famine through efficient mastery over nature, the eradication of death itself through all-powerful magic.”_

_Chills traveled Vanyel’s spine. “Eradication, then. That was your dream.”_

_Leareth shrugged lightly. “Or so I would now describe it. It never occurred to me, deep in my bones, that for the citizens of a utopia to flourish they would require structures, programs, scaffolding, beyond those necessary to eliminate problems.”_

_The towering dark demigod smoothed a black wing, amidst his icy cathedral’s increasingly insistent stream of sanguine vapor. “I have never required such institutions. And though I suspect few would agree, I have always considered myself profoundly egalitarian — whatever I can do, I believe others could do themselves, if not for the limitations placed upon them by reality.”_

_Vanyel, standing in a pseudo-divine Haven whose glow had only grown, listened to the symphony of many instruments and many songs, saw the decentralized, almost organic patterns of iterated construction, tasted the rainbow of different beliefs and values and ways._

_“And now?” Vanyel asked. “Do you have a new dream?”_

_Leareth’s eyes went distant, and his mouth became a thin line. “It is no longer my place. From my position, I cannot both cause and choose, cannot both bring flourishing and define its shape.” A minute shrug. “So I choose not to choose. I decline to dream.”_

_The world turned under the iron clouds, the bright stars, the dark moon, a fraction of a degree._

_“You must know something of what will come to pass — you ran the entire series of divine negotiations in your mind. Will we... still die? Still suffer? Will we still be stricken by poverty, disease, scarcity, war — all those things you would have eradicated if...” (If I hadn’t stopped you?_ Vanyel did not say. _)_

_“You will.” Leareth exuded calm, unlike his typical blankness somehow, less a mask and more a clear lake with nothing to hide. “But less so.”_

_“You will still be affixed to the Great Wheel of Life as it makes its turns through the boundary plane between positive and negative infinities. Like a waterwheel where any given point must pass from breathing to drowning, you will pass from joy to sorrow, from beauty to the grotesque, from flourishing to desolation.”_

_From within the aura of darkness, Leareth flared his many wings. “Yet the wheel has been raised up. The tide has been lowered. Beings will live longer, happier lives, and die shorter, less ruinsome deaths.”_

_The avatar of light-within-darkness let out a shuddering breath. “It is not all that I would have wished for. But I choose to believe that it is enough.”_

_Something nagged at Vanyel’s mind. Something that Leareth had said, or something he wasn’t saying..._

_“‘You.’” Vanyel, avatar of color-within-light, focused his radiance, pursed his lips. “You keep saying ‘you’ will see this world. Why aren’t you saying ‘we’, Leareth?”_

_The dark moon shifted in the sky to reveal a painterly wash of stars. The divine Haven expanded its magic further, glowed brighter, hummed louder, quivered more insistently. The blood of the icy cathedral hissed into its ever-growing cloud of red steam._

_Leareth stood straight, darkness concentrating around his form, and interlaced his fingers behind his back. “Consider: what will the people of Velgarth say when this day has come and gone? When their world has been inverted, transformed, revolutionized. Will they be content with their imperfect utopia? Or will they seek to emulate the one who brought them this far, in order to go further still?”_

_“Copycats,” Vanyel said, suddenly unsettled._

_“Thus is the power of stories. Of myth. If the blood of the masses can be spilt once to create a new god, then why not again? If the great and terrible Master Dark was so successful in his schemes, why would a thousand driven, brilliant bloodpath mages not follow in his footsteps?”_

_Vanyel bit his lip, dampened the rainbow chorus around him to better attend to what he was hearing. “What are you saying then?”_

_“Simply this: I cannot be the truth. The first piece of positive scaffolding that the people will need, in order to thrive in your new world, will be the story of what happened.”_

_The great avatar floated a full demigod-height into the sky, and projected down onto the clouds a magical scene of outlines and silhouettes, rendered in black and red and iron._

_“The story of a young boy who grew up terrorized by the world around him. Who fell into great power by a twist of cruelest fate, who used that power to help the world, to build a movement. And who allied with an ancient, terrible villain who he believed in his heart could be redeemed —“_

_“No Leareth, that’s not —“_

_“— and together they worked a plan that the hero believed would save the world, while all along the villain intended to betray him at the final door and ascend on a wave of death to godhood —“_

_“Stop it, just stop it!“_

_“— and though the villain slew his Companion and isolated him from friend and family to capture his mind, in the end the hero’s loved ones rallied to his side, revealed the dark mage’s perfidy for all to see, and in a climactic clash of power that shook the continent and rearranged several physical and magical laws, the villain was utterly, irretrievably, irrevocably destroyed.”_

_The light show ended. Leareth descended to the ground in front of the ice cathedral. The iron clouds drifted by, unawares._

_Vanyel’s hands were clenched in fists of rage, his face wet with running tears. “You can’t do this. You can’t. You can’t just pretend you haven’t changed, that you’re still the same crazy, selfish villain I met in that first dream.”_

_Leareth gave a slow, half shake of his head. “I have changed. I no longer feel that I must live in order to have succeeded. I no longer feel that I must act as the self I model myself to be, if that is in conflict with my goals. I no longer feel... burdened.”_

_Leareth slowly strode forward, out from the fog bank of power and blood. “You have taken my burden, Vanyel. I may go; you must stay. The world needs a hero it can look up to; an exemplar of how virtue can lead to positive change; a Bard who can tell the tale of the world that was and how it came to an end.”_

_Vanyel moved forward as well, out from the dome of divine energy glowing out from the white-and-rainbow city, an ache behind his eyes and in his heart._

_He took a few uncertain steps, then stopped. “Wait, won’t everyone think I’m kind of a monster for getting five million people to kill themselves?”_

_Leareth stood at the exact center between Haven and the cathedral, between rainbow and blood, and he gave Vanyel a warm smile. “I have it on good authority they’ll return, one way or another. And I suspect they’ll not only forgive you, but thank you for the honor. You did give them the chance to save the world, after all.”_

_Vanyel closed the distance between them. The dark moon sought the horizon; the barely-visible animals fled from sight; the city of Haven and the cathedral of ice produced expanding, slow-motion supernovas of holy multipolar energy and deathly singular power, respectively. He took one last step, came close enough to Leareth to feel his breath against his face._

_Leareth offered up his hands. Vanyel took them. The two avatars of change looked into each other’s eyes for all of the moment they had left._

_The heat and the cold of the accelerating explosions of energy crept up behind them, the wavefronts close to making contact, close to consuming them. The avatar of color-within-light must have asked a question with his eyes; the avatar of light-within-darkness nodded._

_(Time’s almost up.)_

_“Leareth, I...” Vanyel’s eyes played across Leareth’s face. “I don’t want to lose you.”_

_Leareth squeezed Vanyel’s hands. “That’s what makes it a sacrifice.”_


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted as a double update, so make sure you don't miss chapter 4 :)
> 
> Major spoilers for AS42V through Chapter 15 of Book 9 (For with you I shall come home again) [haha sorry about that!]

_Many, many years later..._

On the fine, slightly springy streets of Haven, which never smell of manure, a pack of littles in white tunics run and wave their wooden swords at a huge flappy black moth made of dark energy. _:_ 🤜🤛 _Teamwork makes the dream work!_ 🤜🤛 _:_ their leader mindshouts. From around the corner, an unsteady metal carriage, sharting fire from its behind, careens wildly through the street and bears down on the littlest little, whose hair is most tousled. With a screeching crash, the carriage is halted, crumpled, and up-ended against the little’s natural shielding. _:Gosh, sorry for wrecking your jaloppy mister!_ 😬 _:_ the littlest little sends. The driver crawls from the wreckage with only bruises and soot marks, and replies: _:No need to fret, dearie, ‘twas only a prototype.:_

Nearby, on an expansive rooftop with excellent and up-to-date structural integrity reports, two sets of crowded bleachers overlook the chalk-and-tan circle of a clay arena. Swords and scales clash as a hat-wearing _hertasi_ with a greatsword and their pet salamander bob and weave against a floofy blue-and-pink haired outlander mage with a pair of rapiers and a pigeon. A concentrated series of tiny lightning strikes from the pigeon drives the _hertasi_ to the edge of the circle, but a last-second flame breath from the overlooked salamander sends the outlander mage over the imaginary damage threshold. The crowd shoots off an unconscionable amount of confetti.

Not far away, on a gently sloping trail in a park where the grasses and streams look to have been crossbred with emeralds and sapphires, a trio of women in snappy, angular suits stroll by, sipping cups of _chava_. “Would _you_ ever volunteer as template for the starpaths Jezze?” “Haha never, Reiji! It’s all vanity cosplay — a mindscan and a blinky supercandle pointed up at the sky do not space travel make. Right Sharry?” “Actually, I already donated, like, 8 years ago? Then just last week the Institute sent me a ‘reconstructed postcard’ with this double sunset picture that said ‘Thanks for the memories, wish you were here,’ so...” Sharry giggles and shrugs. Jezze rolls her eyes. Reiji takes another sip of _chava_.

On a good, simple bench situated on a hilltop, overlooking Haven’s streets and rooftops and park trails, sit an older man with silver hair, and a young boy whose legs dangle down off the bench, the toes of his shoes just scuffing the ground.

“What a beautiful day,” the older man says.

 _:Why do you talk with your mouth?_ 👅💬 _:_ the young boy sends. _:And why are you so old?:_

The older man chuckles, leathery and warm. “I have spent many years talking with my mouth and becoming old. I suppose you could say they’ve become habits.”

The young boy scrunches up his face and sticks his legs straight out. _:Well but why don’t you just get young again at, like, the grocery store?_ 🙃 _:_

The older man nods. “You’re very good at being curious. Not that that should be a surprise... Let’s just say I _choose_ to be old. It reminds me of... things I want to be reminded of.”

The young boy lets his legs drop, and runs his hands over his face while making raspberry sounds. The older man takes in the scenes playing out around him.

The young boy tugs at the older man’s tunic. _:Can I be curious at you again?:_

“Of course.”

 _:Will Master Dark ever come back?_ 👹 _:_ He pauses, folds his hands in his lap. _:I know we’re not supposed to talk about him, on account of how he’s so evil... only Mama keeps saying if I’m not good he’s going to eat my toes, so really she brought it up first.:_

“Well let’s think,” the older man says, crossing one leg over the other and staring off toward the horizon. “Velgarth is a big world; and ‘ever’ is a long time. So he might well come back some day.” He held up a hand. “But if he does, you and your mama don’t need to worry. The world will be different than it was; I even think _he’ll_ be different. In time, all things change.”

The older man smiles and ruffles the young boy’s raven-black hair. “Even spirits, little Vanyel.”

The young boy giggles and pushes his hand away with a quick shield burst. _:You’re so silly, Mr. Steflendel._ 😄 _:_

And life goes on.

_FIN_


End file.
